Holding steadfast to religious freedom: Guest commentary

We who live in Southern California know how urban sprawl has pushed wildlife from native environments. Sometimes the wildlife push back and return to areas they once had to themselves. Enlightened policies have created areas that protect wildlife and provided safe accommodation when wildlife venture back to where they once lived.

Take this thinking and consider how government sprawl has encroached into spheres once regarded as religious. Matters like contraception, once a private matter or between individuals and their religion, are now provided by government mandate and religious organizations are told to comply.

In these cases, government has become the urbanizer and religion pushes back and demands accommodation. In fact, the more a government promotes its own utopian social ideals, the more there will be conflicts between the state and religions that have their own visions of the ideal.

Thursday, January 16 is Religious Freedom Day by presidential proclamation. The date recognizes the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, our country’s first legal safeguard for religious liberty, adopted on Jan. 16, 1786. This document by Thomas Jefferson ensured freedom of conscience instead of religion imposed by the state.

Our nation has strong debates over how and when either a religious or a secular position should prevail. I offer my own thoughts for a truly libertarian understanding of religious freedom.

First, religious freedom means the freedom to speak your convictions, even on controversial religious or moral matters, without government repercussions. This in turn will have a leavening effect on society’s own sense of tolerance of those who express values outside the current mainstream or the thinking du jour.

Second, it means freedom to persuade others to convert to your faith and the freedom to convert from one faith to another faith or to profess no formal religion at all — all without punishment, retaliation or pressure.

In affirming this, we are a light to nations that ban religious conversions or oppress those not of the majority faith and relegate them to second-class status.

Third, religious freedom bestows a right to hold any political or governmental office regardless of your religious beliefs. Religious tests are banned by the U.S. Constitution (Article 6, paragraph 3). But we’ve often seen religion or its moral convictions raised as a political barrier. Remember the dispute over John F. Kennedy’s Catholicism and recent concern over Mitt Romney’s Mormonism.

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A fourth freedom is the right not only to believe as you choose but also to practice the moral tenets of your faith. This means doing what faith demands and refusing what others demand when it violates faith’s convictions.

Freedom to practice your faith is not unlimited the way freedom to believe is. But once a person establishes that a practice or a prohibition rises from his or her belief system, the burden of proof should shift to the government. No conduct based on religious convictions should be restricted by the government unless it proves a compelling state interest that justifies a limit on religious liberty. This is a vital in light of the current debate over whether religious organizations opposed to contraception should be required to provide coverage in one form or another.

Finally, religious freedom means government should not tax what is dedicated to God and necessary to the furtherance of faith or mission. This includes houses of worship, land dedicated to religious purposes, hospitals, schools and more. As we observe Religious Freedom Day, we honor our nation’s legacy of religious independence by upholding our right to exercise our beliefs free from prejudice or persecution. We remember that religious liberty is not just an American right, it is a universal human right to be protected at home and around the globe.

Don Shoemaker is pastor emeritus of Grace Community Church of Seal Beach